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Dave Hyde: Putting Marlins' season on pause is easy call — it's what comes next that's crucial

South Florida Sun Sentinel - 7/28/2020

It's the right decision, the easy decision, this one Tuesday by Major League Baseball to put the Miami Marlins' season on pause through at least Sunday in the wake of a coronavirus outbreak that infected half the team.

The only better decision would have been making it Sunday, when four Marlins had tested positive rather than playing a game that afternoon. Some teammates, support staff and Philadelphia Phillies would have been spared more exposure to the virus.

The good news: The first-place Marlins are going out on top.

The bad news: Everything else, considering the potential ramifications for this Marlins season and the rest of sports outside of controlled bubbles. We'll see. There's no need to be an alarmist. The facts will present themselves soon enough.

The pause will allow the Marlins "time to focus on providing care for their players and planning their Baseball Operations for a resumption early next week," Major League Baseball said in a statement.

That's if it's ready to resume next week. If the roster is healthy enough. If the full support staff is ready to go. If everyone even wants to play considering, well, would you work in a company where 15 of 30 employees just tested positive?

"I'm pleased to see MLB finally taking things seriously," said Dr. Zach Binney, an epidemiologist at Oxford College of Emory University. "I suspect they'll have to end up suspending their games longer _ maybe another week _ but this is a good start. What to do after Sunday will depend on how tests come back over the next few days.

"The Marlins do need to make sure that everyone is quarantining individually, and there's very little, if any, face-to-face contact between members of the traveling party. This is to stop the virus from spreading further over the next few days."

Binney advises shutting down the season for two weeks to give the virus a chance to, "clear out of the locker room, make sure no incubating infections or anything like that before you get back to play."

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred suggested in a statement the game had things under control.

The MLB statement said, "out of an abundance of caution," the Marlins' upcoming games and Philadelphia's games Wednesday and Thursday were canceled. It also said the, "health and safety protocols were designed with a challenging circumstance like the one facing the Marlins in mind."

Hmm. Those protocols allowed Sunday's game to be played after four Marlins tested positive. They had nothing to say until Monday, when 11 players tested positive.

"That was truly disturbing and disheartening that they played that game on Sunday," Binney said. "I was mowing my lawn (when he heard) and I dropped my lawnmower. 'Is this really happening?' I said the line on the league should be looking at is three or four (positive tests) in rapid succession. That should stop things."

Don't think of the games. Don't think of the TV money lost. Think of the players, coaches and the support staff safety. Of course, safety aside, how would the Marlins even field a real team? They'd have to compose half their roster of players stashed in Jupiter, where another 30 players are training after the minor leagues were canceled this season. That's if the ones still on the roster were deemed safe.

"An outbreak like this was totally foreseeable," Binney said. "I was suggesting it ever since MLB put out a plan that doesn't involve a bubble. If you have players and staff living at home with family and going into the community, if there's a lot of virus in the area, it's probably going to get into the team."

"In terms of what comes next or MLB season at large, I'd say what we need is a swift investigation into what he heck happened. (Was) this risky behavior of Marlins players and staff, like going out into a bar? Were MLB's provisions insufficient or its protocol not adhered to? Finding out what went wrong is the next step."

Now some good news. Those sports in bubbles, Binney thinks, will fare much better. He pointed to the men's and women's soccer leagues that played tournaments in bubbles as faring well. The NBA and NHL are, "working great _ honestly better than I could have expected. That's showing you the bubble plan works."

Then there's baseball and football, with no such plans.

"The NFL, right now, their plan is similar to Major League Baseball, and the NFL has more people and more contact," he said. "To me, that suggests if a case does get in (to a team), the virus is likely to spread more quickly and more widely than you saw with the Marlins."

That's for the coming days. For now, baseball made the easy decision on the Marlins. It paused the season until Sunday. It's a start of the decision-making, not a finish, with the next step being if this season goes on at all.

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(c)2020 Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.)

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